What Your Day Job Says About You

By Daniel Colasimone - 24 Aug 2015

Whether your job defines you or is just something you do for to earn some sweet dollies, it does tend to give a fair bit away about what kind of person you are.

Scratch the surface a little further, sniff, and even deeper truths are revealed.

Read on below to find out what your job says about you. If your occupation does not appear on the list, send your complaints on the back of a postcard to The Urban List, locked bag 6363, Cocos Islands.

Accountant

You have an irrational fear of Tuesdays, which tends to cloud the rest of your week. Your poor cooking skills mean you will someday poison yourself or someone you love. You don’t know this but your mother has all your baby teeth in a small bag which she carries around in her pocket. She has given a name to each one.

Marketing & PR

Your joie de vivre no doubt stems from the fact you’re gorgeous and you make freaky, passionate love to other gorgeous people every single day of the week. All I can say is, enjoy it while you can, you smug bastard. Once you’re old, all you’ll have left is your sharp wit, wicked sense of humour and the love of your partner, family and friends.

Retail Salesperson

The intense sexual chemistry you experience with every third person you encounter is a result of a pheromone imbalance which can only be dulled by eating copious amounts of Nutella. In a past life you had an illicit affair with a young Joseph Stalin.

IT

You have within you one great work of literature. If you ever sat down and forced yourself to write it you would receive better reviews than Nabokov and make more money than JK Rowling. The animal you most resemble is the Saharan Fennec Fox. The words ‘can you tell me where the IT department is’ send shivers of terror through your whole body.

Teacher

Society treats you like Americans treat Vegemite; you are misunderstood, mocked and even reviled. Sure, you may be salty and unpleasant to look at, but combined with margarine you ARE worthwhile. Plus you can spell better than most of the kids on The Great Australian Spelling Bee.

Spy

You pretend you’re being ironic by keeping one of your childhood toys around but really you are hopelessly attached to it on every emotional level. You think Hubba Bubba gum is the greatest human invention of the last five centuries.

Chef

The sensuous pilgrimage you undergo with your food every day will only be complete once you cover your entire body in goose fat and have 12-hour tantric sex with all of the wait staff at your work.

Doctor

After every shift you stop by Nando’s and boisterously devour a whole chicken. Don’t remember? That’s because you black out while doing so. Go in and ask the staff there, they think you’re an animal. Some of the younger ones are actually a bit frightened of you. Another thing you don’t know about yourself is there exist some Polaroids of you from first year Uni that, if they came to light, could send you to jail for 5 to 10.

Lawyer

One day Russell Crowe’s mole will appear to you in a dream and reveal the shattering secrets of the Universe. Until then, try to carry off a façade of sanity by professing to love The Bachelor and Tim Tams and sausage dogs and all the other things whitebread Australians worship.

Security Guard

No television show since Barney and Friends has truly enchanted you. Chicken pox scars turn you on. You are mystified by Velcro.

Artist

As a way of dealing with your parents’ disappointment, why not embroider a quilt that depicts all the moments they have let you down throughout your life? You can present it to them on Christmas Day. That time your dad forgot to pick you up from school. The time you caught your mum kissing Patrick Swayze on the TV screen. It can all go on the quilt.

Engineer

That game you play on your phone is actually the government’s way of assessing your eye-hand coordination, mind-body coordination, fast reaction time and execution of military strategy. You are on a shortlist of hand-picked outstanding individuals who will be the pilots for the RAAF’s new top-secret project: a weaponised hoverboard. Make sure you win that game, Ace.

Journalist

If you don’t already have a son named Rufus, you will at some stage. The reason that one of your socks is always slipping down is because one of your feet is shrinking. Have a look if you don’t believe me. Your motto for the next 12 months should be: A chicken runs fastest without its head.

Office Clerk

The cause of your crippling despair is that you’re actually a crumpet person, not an English muffin person. Switch to crumpets in the morning and watch your life turn around in a matter of days. And while we’re psychoanalysing you, the fact you’ve never completed a full game of monopoly explains the relationship issues you’re having today.

Fighter Pilot

There are a few spelling mistakes in your Tinder profile and it’s really not helping you get laid.

Waiter/Waitress/Barista

You should start using the word ‘tangerine’ constantly, to describe everything; not just colours and tastes but your moods, the bus ride to work this morning, your friend’s beard. People will assume you have uncovered some hidden human truth. By the way, watch out for the chef, I think he/she is planning on getting lubed up with goose fat and having sexual relations with you.

Urban List Writer

Oscar Wilde said ‘We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.’ The second part certainly doesn’t apply to you as you’re lying face down, unconscious in the gutter with chicken wing sauce in your hair and an empty bottle of Wild Turkey American Honey beside you.

Tradie

In the My Little Pony universe you would be Scootaloo. Though you sometimes get picked on for not being able to fly, you are brash and spunky. Along with Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom you form a club called the Cutie Mark Crusaders to discover your talents and earn your cutie marks.

Musician

When ordering fish and chips you always get battered then are wracked with guilt for days afterwards that you didn’t get grilled, or at least crumbed. There’s a killer on the road, his brain is squirming like a toad. There’s nothing on the top but a bucket and a mop and an illustrated book about birds. I am the Eggman.

Financial Advisor

You are actually just amazed nobody has realised everything you say about money is a complete and utter guess. The same way you ALWAYS guess which is the left sock and which is the right sock without ever knowing how to tell them apart, I feel this financial advice streak is going to continue as well.

Real Estate Agent

Though it’s not common knowledge, even in your family, you are actually descended from Magyar royalty. This perhaps explains your penchant for gambling, fine horses and the Green Fairy, Absinthe.

Finance/Banking

Remember that time you licked a toad in grade 3? Everything you think you have experienced since then has been a vivid hallucination. You’re actually still in the sick room with a vomit bucket beside you. Your mum will be coming to get you when she finishes work at 5.

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By Daniel Colasimone

You think darkness is your ally? Dan was born in it, moulded by it. He didn’t see the light until he was already a man. Raised on the mean streets of Bundaberg, he has ended up in Brisbane by way of Italy, South Korea, Argentina and a few other places. When not covering sportsy stuff for the ABC, he writes a fortnightly column for The Urban List on the world of man stuff. Twitter: @DanColasimone